The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

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Sunday, July 16, 2017

Dismantle UNRWA - Adi Schwartz

by Adi Schwartz

Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu has called for the dismantling of UNRWA. Such a
move could benefit both Israel and the peace process.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In a surprising change of policy, Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu has called for the dismantling of UNRWA. Such a
move could benefit both Israel and the peace process. The new US
administration might change its decades-old policy as well.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stunned many by
declaring that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
should be dismantled.

Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu charged that “in
various UNRWA institutions, there is a lot of incitement against Israel,
and therefore the existence of UNRWA – and unfortunately its work from
time to time – perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem rather than
solves it. … Therefore, the time has come to dismantle UNRWA and merge
its components with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
[UNHCR].”

This long overdue step was rejected for years by the Israeli
establishment. Up to now, Jerusalem has prevented attempts to change
UNRWA’s mandate or close it down because it perceived the agency as a
stabilizing factor. Israel focused instead on anti-Israeli incitement in
UNRWA’s education system and on its collaboration with Hamas. That
collaboration implied an international imprimatur on egregious Hamas
behavior.

Instead of fighting UNRWA’s very existence, Israel focused on its
actions. This time, the prime minister is talking about a bigger shift
in policy.

UNRWA’s initial role was to distribute humanitarian assistance to
Palestinian Arabs displaced during the 1948 war. However, over the
years, instead of being a tool to solve the refugee problem, UNRWA has
become a tool for its eternal perpetuation. Without UNRWA, the
Palestinian refugees, and certainly their children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren, would have resettled in their Arab host countries
or elsewhere in the world, as many millions of other refugees have done.
They would have done so reluctantly, of course, but would have had no
other choice, as no organization would have taken care of them for so
many years.

Because UNRWA did nothing to reduce the number of Palestinian
refugees, their numbers have swollen from 750,000 in 1949 to more than 5
million today. This was a surrender to the Arab wish to perpetuate the
problem. From its earliest stages, UNRWA was a politicized agency, more
interested in appeasing the Arab world’s wish to destroy Israel than in
the humanitarian cause for whose sake it was established.

Without UNRWA, the Arabs could not have come to the negotiations
table with international support – as embodied by UNRWA – for their
ridiculous demand that 5 million refugees and their descendants be
allowed to resettle in Israel, thus subverting its Jewish nature.
Without UNRWA, only a small fraction of its “registered refugees” would
be considered real refugees in the first place. Many of UNRWA’s refugees
should never have been granted that status, and the vast majority of
them are descendants who would not be granted automatic refugee status
elsewhere in the world. The Arabs would likely have attempted these
demands, but would not have had the backing of a special UN agency.

As the years have worn on, UNRWA has maintained a system expressly
meant to perpetuate the refugee problem rather than solve it. Unlike the
UNHCR, which provides six options for the cessation of the status of
refugee, UNRWA offers zero. Whereas the primary concern of UNHCR is to
resettle refugees and help them build new lives, UNRWA promotes only one
future: repatriation to Israel. That prospect is contrary to worldwide
historical practice and anathema to Israel. It is also toxic to both the
prospects for a peace agreement and Palestinian national development.

In effect, UNRWA has become a spokesman – and patron – for the call
to destroy the Jewish homeland by flooding it with millions of refugees
and their descendants. Without UNRWA, it is hard to see how the
belligerent Palestinian/Arab call for return could have survived for
seven decades. Because Israel is not going to commit national suicide
via demographic subversion, this UNRWA-induced intransigence is an
assured recipe for the conflict’s prolongation.

Merging UNRWA into UNHCR would mean an immediate drop in the number
of Palestinian refugees from more than 5 million today to a few hundred
thousand, perhaps even fewer. Most of UNRWA’s refugees either never left
their country (Mandatory Palestine) or became citizens of another
country (Jordan) and would thus simply be omitted from the list.
Moreover, this merger would mean repatriation is not the sole option for
solving the Palestinian refugee problem. Both these outcomes are
clearly in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.

The Trump administration seems open to fresh ideas. For years, the US
– the biggest donor to UNRWA – did not want to deal with the agency
because it feared an Arab backlash. This time, it appears Washington and
the Sunni world have enough in common – from fighting Iran to signing
major arm deals – that Washington should not fear making major changes
to UNRWA, or even abolishing it altogether. A push from Jerusalem may
well wield results this time around.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Adi Schwartz is co-author of a forthcoming book on the
perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem (together with Dr. Einat
Wilf). He is writing his PhD thesis on the subject in Bar-Ilan
University. Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/dismantle-unrwa/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.